Videos

Curator Francesco Bonami and 20th Century & Contemporary Art Researcher Patrizia Koenig take a closer look at Sigmar Polke's 'Stadtbild II (City Painting II)' from 1968, where the artist provides a glimpse into the New York City of his imagination, having not yet travelled to the city itself. Existing at the threshold of a utopian versus dystopian interpretation, this painting belongs to Polke’s late 1960s pantheon of works depicting faraway places. Like his closest peer Gerhard Richter, Polke was both fascinated and critical of the United States, but embraced a formally diverse painterly aesthetic in the context of post-war West Germany.